Julie Heffernan’s paintings are both immediately distinctive and original. She has a baroque sensibility and a keen grasp of the historical evolution of the medium. The works build through a stream of images and ideas with a dreamlike, surreal feeling, to which Heffernan contributes by titling each one “Self Portrait…” In her recent paintings, the figure set in a tortured landscape functions as a metaphor for contemporary experience. These pieces offer a way of making sense of the world following disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. In Heffernan’s words: “I need to imagine another way, to outfit myself with signs and banners that speak louder than I can, to envision how we might remake the world as it is slowly falling apart.”

Julie Heffernan has exhibited widely, most recently at Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, CA. Her catastrophe series was featured in The Sky Is Falling, a solo exhibition and catalogue that originated at the Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, CA, traveled to the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; and was shown at PPOW Gallery, New York, NY. Her work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions and was on view in Enchantment at Wave Hill in 2004. Heffernan received her BFA in painting and printmaking from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MFA in painting from Yale University, New Haven, CT.

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Support for the Visual Arts Program is provided by Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc., Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Community Trust Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and by the Cathy and Stephen Weinroth Commissioning Fund for the Arts.